Jerome Wetzel is the Chief Television Critic for Seat42F and a regular contributing reviewer on Blogcritics. He also appears on The Good, The Bad, and the Geeky podcast and Let's Talk TV With Barbara Barnett.

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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

MIXOLOGY A Bad Brew

ABC’s MIXOLOGY, a new sitcom about ten
single people spending one night in a bar, premieres this Wednesday. In
the first half hour, “Tom & Maya,” we are introduced to most of the
cast and the premise as Tom (Blake Lee, Parks and Recreation), recently
dumped by his fiancé of eight years and dragged out by a couple of
friends, hits on Maya (Ginger Gonzaga, Legit), a ruthless, ball-busting
lawyer.

MIXOLOGY is a little bit of an anthology
series with a tone similar to the quickly canceled Love Bites because
it will jump around from person to person each week. But it’s not quite
an anthology because the main story only takes up a little bit of the
episode, with other players being featured throughout the half hour,
too, even when their names aren’t in the title.

This structure is very confusing. The
characters are easy enough to tell apart, to be sure, but there’s a lot
of them for a sitcom, and the pacing is rapid enough to really prevent
the viewer from learning even the names of the characters. After two
installments, I’m still having to use the show’s website for help in
telling you who these people are.

There’s Tom, of course, and his
well-intentioned, but kind of douchey, friends, Cal (Craig Frank, 8.13)
and Bruce (Andrew Santino, Crafty). Maya is there to meet her
wishy-washy friend, Liv (Kate Simses, What’s Your Number?), who chooses
the safe relationship over passion. Jessica (Alexis Carra, Incredible
Girl) asks her sister, Janey (Sarah Bolger, Once Upon a Time), to go
with her to meet a date she set up online. The man Jessica is meeting
turns out to be Brit Ron (Adam Campbell, Touch), who is having the worst
day of his life. And their waitress, Kacey (Vanessa Lengies, Glee),
tries to break up with the jerk bartender, Dominic (Adan Canto, The
Following).

To make matters more confusing, Janey
disappears before episode two and is replaced by an annoying friend of
Jessica’s, Fab (Frankie Shaw, Blue Mountain State), whom we don’t really
get a read-on yet. This means a character who has a touching
interaction with Janey has to immediately forget about her and turn his
attentions elsewhere. Plus, flashbacks grow the cast even more, making
MIXOLOGY one hard show to follow.

Not that viewers will be tempted to try
to puzzle it out because there isn’t a single likable character in the
whole group to connect through. Tom may be the stereotypical “nice guy,”
but he’s a wimp and way too much of a pushover to be the hero. And will
anyone really want him to get with Maya after they see just how cruel
she can be? It’s not like she’s an obvious happy ending for him. The
others are equally flawed and detestable, with horndog men and easily
manipulated women who like being put down.

To be fair, the setting of MIXOLOGY, a
bar where people come to hit on strangers and many of them just want to
get laid, isn’t the ideal place to find good people. Good people go to
bars, sure, but the types of friends we’re used to seeing portrayed are
either frequenting those establishments while enjoying one another’s
company, or are having a bad day and acting a bit out of character.
Rarely do they make a habit of trolling. Now, this series asks us to see
this as a viable place to find love and change one’s life for the
better, and that just doesn’t work.

The premise also extremely limits the
structure. As mentioned, the episodes do take time to show us other
places and events, but the main story is confined to a single place and
time. This will grow old week after week. How I Met Your Mother is
getting mixed reviews doing its final season over the course of one
weekend. Having multiple seasons, assuming the series goes on for any
length of time, on one night is just not tenable. Either it needs some
serious changes, or it can’t possibly last.

Two episodes was more than enough for
me. I don’t think I’ll be checking back in on it again, assuming it even
lasts beyond that pair of installments, which is not a certainty at
this point.